THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 19, 2018 39
and Furious" movies filmed a rambunc-
tious race scene on the Malecón.
Audrey Lee arrived in June, , six
weeks before the Embassy formally re-
opened. She was excited about her as-
signment. She had previously worked
in Africa and Asia, and when the State
Department had asked her where she
wanted to go next she requested Ha-
vana. Lee and her husband were fas-
cinated by the country's history and its
music; their twins had grown up hear-
ing their great-grandfather's stories
about his time on the island as a Navy
seaman. "We just thought it would be
the perfect place for us," she explained.
Lee and her family settled into an
airy Spanish-style house, with a formal
dining room and a back yard filled with
tropical flowers and mango trees. Along
the fence, her husband planted toma-
toes and chili peppers. At the Embassy,
an optimistic mood prevailed. Lee loved
working alongside the Cuban sta ers
in the consular section. Some of them
came with her to one of Obama's ap-
pearances in Havana, and wept when
he shook their hands.
After Obama's visit, however, U.S.
o cials took note of a distinct back-
lash. Fidel Castro published a wary let-
ter in the Communist Party daily,
Granma, that reprised his long years of
conflict with American Presidents. "No-
body should be under the illusion that
the people of this noble and selfless coun-
try will renounce the glory, the rights, or
the spiritual wealth they have gained,"
he wrote. Despite years of financial pri-
vation, Fidel, who was approaching
ninety, insisted that isolation was pref-
erable to engagement with a longtime
enemy. "We do not need the empire to
give us anything," he wrote.Three weeks
later, at a Communist Party congress,
Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, the foreign
minister, described Obama's visit as "an
attack on our history, culture, and sym-
bols." At a military parade in Havana,
soldiers chanted an ominous message:
"We are going to make war if imperial-
ism comes." Shouting Obama's name,
they threatened to "give you a cleansing
with rebels and mortar, and make you a
hat out of bullets to the head."
If Cuba's Communist traditionalists
feared that Obama's overtures had been
a pretext for increasing the United
States' influence, Raúl Castro seemed
unconcerned. When the Foreign Min-
istry asked foreign ambassadors in Ha-
vana to attend a briefing, the Ameri-
cans weren't sure what to expect. Despite
Fidel's rhetoric, Cuban o cials at the
briefing declared Obama's visit a suc-
cess. One attendee said that the Cu-
bans seemed to want to send dual mes-
sages: one to domestic hard-liners, who
were hostile to the U.S., and another
to international audiences, who sup-
ported normalization.
Like virtually everyone else, Raúl
Castro assumed that Hillary Clinton
would win the election and carry
on Obama's policies, including the rap-
prochement with Cuba. Then came a
series of events that upended the pol-
itics of the two countries. On Novem-
ber , , Donald Trump won the
election. Seventeen days later, Fidel
Castro died.
Obama issued a measured statement.
"At this time of Fidel Castro's passing,
we extend a hand of friendship to the
Cuban people," he wrote. "History will
record and judge the enormous impact
of this singular figure on the people
and world around him."Trump reacted
more brusquely, with a statement that
read, "Today, the world marks the pass-
ing of a brutal dictator who oppressed
his own people for nearly six decades.
Fidel Castro's legacy is one of firing
squads, theft, unimaginable su ering,
poverty and the denial of fundamental
human rights." Two days later, Trump
threatened to roll back diplomatic re-
lations. "If Cuba is unwilling to make
a better deal for the Cuban people, the
Cuban/American people and the U.S.
as a whole, I will terminate [the] deal,"
he tweeted.
Mari Carmen Aponte, the acting
Assistant Secretary of State for West-
ern Hemisphere A airs, led a U.S. del-
egation to Havana to see her Cuban
counterpart, Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, in
order to tie up loose ends before Trump
took o ce. Aponte sensed Vidal's anx-
iety about dealing with the new Ad-
ministration. "Josefina, I share your con-
cerns," Aponte told her. "These people
are not like us at all." Aponte suggested
that the Cubans send Trump a signal
of interest in continued normalization.
At the end of the meeting, she hugged
Vidal and said, "Good luck." Soon af-
terward, she met with members of
Trump's transition team, and emerged
saying to herself, "Cuba is in trouble."
On December , , Patient Zero
in the Cuba crisis visited the Em-
bassy health o ce.The patient, a C.I.A.
o cer who was operating under diplo-
matic cover, told a nurse that he had ex-
perienced strange sensations of sound
and pressure while in his home, followed
by painful headaches and dizziness.
O cials described the man as an
experienced spy, who, like his colleagues,
was trained to recognize signs of coun-
terintelligence operations. Since arriv-
ing in Havana, he had been subjected
to constant surveillance, intrusions into
his home, and obvious tampering with
his belongings.These actions were an-
noying but not unexpected. Cuban in-
telligence knew where all the U.S. dip-
lomats lived and watched them closely
to try to discern who worked for the
C.I.A. or with dissidents.
Vicki Huddleston, who led the U.S.
Interests Section from to ,
noted in a memoir that her house was
surrounded by lavish mansions, three
of which had no occupants. "One was
used as a set for a local soap opera
broadcast on Cuban television," she
wrote. "The other two were strategi-
cally located, with video and listening
devices pointed at my residence."When
Americans were away from home,
Cuban "entry teams" sometimes broke
in. Mostly, they left no trace, but some-
times they wanted their targets to know
that they were being watched. Jason
Matthews, who in the late eighties was
the C.I.A. station chief in Havana and
now writes spy novels, said that he woke
up some mornings and found cigarette
butts in an ashtray in his living room.
Sometimes Embassy employees came
home to find feces left in their toilets.
There were perennial rumors among
the Americans of family pets being
poisoned.
But C.I.A. o cers knew that the
Cubans---unlike the Russians and, in-
creasingly, the Chinese---were careful
not to cause them physical harm. When
the first victim reported his strange in-
cident, it seemed as if the rules had
changed. The C.I.A. station chief in
Havana briefed Je rey DeLaurentis,
and they agreed that there had been